Reports From Japan Suggest Shohei Otani Will Request To Be Posted

Japanese star pitcher/outfielder Shohei Otani has long been on the radar as one of the most talented players on the planet who isn’t already with a MLB organization. He stoked expectations before the season that he might ask his current team — the Nippon Ham Fighters — to make him available to major league clubs through the posting system. Now, reports out of Japan tonight suggest that’s just what will occur (see, e.g., here).

Of course, given the indications given by Otani himself earlier this year, that news doesn’t come as a major surprise. Indeed, the expectation among major league teams has remained that Otani would become available, as ESPN.com’s Buster Olney recently reported.

It’s also worth bearing in mind that nothing is yet official, though the reports seemingly indicate that Otani has already made his wishes clear with club officials. We learned earlier this year that the Nippon Ham organization had largely committed to granting Otani his wish to leave for the majors whenever he requested it, even though the club can’t receive more than $20MM as a transfer fee and could have maintained control over the fascinating talent for a few more years under Nippon Professional Baseball’s system. That $20MM sum may change, Jeff Passan of Yahoo Sports reports, though he adds that the posting process is expected to continue operating in essentially the same manner — allowing any teams that are willing to pay the maximum fee to negotiate with the player.

Though Otani has not pitched much this year due to injury, perhaps that won’t have much of an impact. For one thing, he is considered an immense talent; if you’re interested in learning more about his projected abilities in the majors, be sure to check out this outstanding post from MLBTR contributor Chuck Wasserstrom. Further, the Japanese star isn’t really going to be looking for top dollar. At 23 years of age, he’s still two years shy of breaking free of the hard international signing limitations found in the new collective bargaining agreement, which effectively caps his potential bonus in the seven-figure range — a laughably small sum for a player who’d surely command nine figures were he available in a free market.

Otani, though, made clear in his prior comments that salary isn’t his chief consideration in pondering a move to the majors. Passan notes that MLB intends to be vigilant in enforcing the rules and will scrutinize any efforts to skirt them. Instead, he’ll weigh other factors, including his evident desire not only to pitch (where he’s considered most talented) but also to see action as a hitter. That’s not to say money won’t enter the equation at all; Otani’s precise approach remains to be seen. Notably, some teams will be able to offer quite a bit more money than others, with some capped at a meager $300K as a penalty under the prior system. And surely organizations will have different ideas on how they can help Otani earn more from endorsements and other sources. Regardless, as I wrote back in April, this sets up a fascinating potential market situation:

Should Otani become available, however, it would likely make for an unprecedented effort by major league organizations to woo him. That’s due not only to his unusual dual capabilities (and wishes), but also his young age and the unique circumstances of the rules limiting what he can be paid. Literally every team in the game would have cause to pursue him vigorously, particularly if the financial commitment is as meager as it seemingly must be.

That all remains true today, even as many of the league’s teams have begun sending emissaries over to Japan — in many cases, top baseball operations decisionmakers — to begin the unusual recruitment process. Any comparably talented young player would require a top draft choice or immense trade return to acquire. But for Otani — who, it’s worth bearing in mind, is considered ready to step directly into a major league rotation — a team need only be willing to pay the $20MM posting fee and whatever sum of international spending money it has available. Simply put, Otani could represent the most unique opportunity in contemporary hot stove history.

Comments

John Middleton will tell Mike Schmidt to inform the fans that the language barrier will upset the chemistry of the team.

Philly media are pretending they have never heard of Otani just as they pretended not to be aware of any other Japanese player being posted in the past.

The level of corruption in the Philly media is off the charts and they are extremely racist in regard to Asians to the point of complete exclusion. Monitoring the media there you would get the impression that there are no Asians in the area when in fact it’s precisely the opposite.

The Asian community needs to organize and protest in front of Citizens Bank Park wearing “42” T-shirts.

Never heard of this site. I was referring to big media in Philly that cover the team. Philly dot com where writer David Murphy less than two years ago referred to Dodgers pitcher Hyun-Jin Ryu as a “Japanese pitcher”. That tells you a lot about David Murphy who never issued a correction on that either.

Since I’m guessing you’re unfamiliar with any sport other than baseball, this means your comments are designed to stir controversy out of nothing. The Phillies are the worst team this year–by far. With money not a factor (because of the INT cap) maybe the Philly media realizes it’s pointless to try as hard as the other big market teams. I get you are a Phillies fan, (a very passionate Phillies fan from the looks of it or Mets fan (I assumed you were a Mets fan from your previous posts)

Props to JDGoat, who posted what looks like a double post of “link to Google.ca”, but are actually two separate articles, from reliable sources that refute Caseys Partner argument. Well done,

When you click on those links, they take you to articles from CSNPhilly and NBCPhiledelphia.

Seriously dude, I didn’t put all that effort into arguing against the “Race Card”, which holds zero truth, to have it thrown back at my face. I’ve been called many things at Mlbtr—and believe me when I say– I’d be shocked if your comment wasn’t removed—but “kind of racist”? Can you please explain Why? Did I bring up Race one time in my entire post? I’m trying to argue against Caseys Partner’s argument that “Phillies Media coverage of Otani is racist” (which you conveniently avoided but still managed to land a barrage of attacks)

Troll? What? I’m a Troll, for putting effort into composing a logical argument? Do you even know who SAS is? Do you follow ANY other sports? Your comment was the most disgusting comment I’ve ever been called at MLBTR. The worst part is you offer no proof or argument to back up your statement, other than throw personal insults without devising a logical counterargument. I honestly wouldn’t have replied—if your comment wasn’t so…

I showed nothing but respect to Casey’s Partner, because I truly believe he believes, what he’s writing. I just respectfully disagreed with Casey’s Partner and offered my argument against his, without making it personal. Saying Caseys Partner is “Stephen A Smith of MLBTR” isn’t personal, or “kinda racist” as you put (I wish MLBTR had a throw up emoji) it was implying Caseys Partner was making a big deal out of nothing, which is SAS’s Modus Operandi. Please keep insults out of it, thegreatCereal.

SAS is a well respected sports writer/commentator especially in Philadelphia. Comparing Casyes Partner to him comes across like you’re belittling both Stephen A. for something while also trying to torch CP…who should take it as just the opposite a compliment. Nowhere in your post did you explain why you were making the comparison. The troll move and kinda racist remark suggested that your post can be taken that way when making a comparison without explanation.

I don’t see him ultimately being a two way player. If he goes to the AL he could DH on nom pitching days 2.times a week or he goes to the NL and he bats every 5th day with some pitch hit spots too. No way he plays the field.

I get the feeling he’s going to go to the Mariners. They’ve been connected and there’s always the Ichiro factor. He’d be the new face of the franchise to lead them out of the perpetual mediocrity they’ve been stuck in.

I could see them bringing Ichiro to fill the spot of what Heredia was until Dyson got hurt. Unless they acquire a better center fielder this off season, they will use Gamel, Haniger and Heredia again next year with the fourth fill in spot open. I could see Ichiro filling that spot.

They are plenty good on the rotation Arrieta was nearly back to form til he was hurt. I think the cubs re-sign him and then try to get Otani or Darvish. Their core 6 is locked up.til 2023 and Bryant will get that massive extension winter 2018. Baez, Russell,Happ,Contreas and.Bryant and Rizzo. They have Jason Heyward who was never great on offense. He’s great on defense. Everyone I named is 28 or younger. And they’re only getting better. Rizzo has hit 30+ and 100 + the last 3 years. And he’s not in his prime yet.

So your telling me they will lock up arrieta and darvish and they will both be good pitchers for 10 more years? Come on man have a clue. Darvish is over rated and not even worth close to what he will be paid. After seeing him start for my dodgers i wouldn’t touch him at all. He is so inconsistent

Wrek305, if you want to argue that Padres ownership won’t be able to afford Otani, I’d be fine with it. But the team has 7 prospects in the MiLB top 100. A handful of young and promising players at the MLB level. There’s huge upside there. Far from garbage.

People assume Otani will only go to a winner. There’s certainly been some truth in that with Japanese players in the past. The Dodgers and Yankees have gotten a lot of them. That said, we don’t know what Otani is looking for. If he comes over he can’t make a lot. So it won’t be the team offering the most money.

He wants to be a two way player and it’s tough to see any NL club putting him in the field on a regular basis. A player needs to work on fielding and it’s tough to do that while also working on pitching. Since Otani would likely only be a hitter about half the time, a team would another guy to pair with him.

He can DH for an AL club. He hasn’t played the field at all since 2014 and not regularly since 2013. So DH is likely to satisfy him. I really think that counts the Cubs, Padres, and any other NL team out.

This comment is from user “kingofspain” in the comments section from this Otani article link to nj.com and echoes my thoughts.

“I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of a guy who can hit and pitch in the majors. At lower levels, even in college, this is common but no one has really done it for an extended time in MLB. Brooks Kieschnick was a decent pinch hitter and middle reliever for the Brewers back in 2003-04 but that’s the last guy who fulfilled both hitting and pitching roles for a team.”

He’s actually incorrect, the most recent person to do it was Micah Owings. Owings was predominantly a pitcher, but the guy could swing the stick and they would occasionally pinch hit with him. I can’t find the stats right now but if I recall correctly he was actually a solid pinch hitter too.

Owings (like every other major league baseball player) hitting and pitching stats are on the Baseball Reference website. In 219 career plate appearances he slashed .283/.310/.502 which is absolutely fantastic for a pitcher. That equates to a 106 OPS+ or 6% better than the league average hitter regardless of position.

Was at a game once where Owings was starting. Reds were down 2 in the bottom of the 6th. He hit for himself with 2 men on. Homered to right center and then came out of the game. Very rare for the pitcher to get an at bat and then not throw another pitch after (minus injuries I guess).

Sadly, the Reds (my hometown club) have done that with quite a lot of pitchers lately. And not just the ones who can hit. When you carry 3 catchers or injured players on your bench that tends to happen.

If money is not the immediate consideration, I agree there will be other priorities. His agent may look at financials, but he will be a 23 year old kid moving to a new country. Quality of team, and how he likes their representatives, absolutely a factor. Does he speak English? He may wish for a city with a substantial Japanese population. Warm weather vs cold weather climate. But much like Cespedes, if it’s possible to set up FA early, or set up some type of opt out on the contract, that could be a deal maker as well.

The signing bonus might not be the immediate consideration, but the other terms of the contract (salary, years) is where he’ll find most of his compensation anyway. The West Coast has an appeal to players from Japan for being that much closer to home. This could matter to him, too, we just don’t know.

liamfg you aren’t mistaken, my friend. $1.5MM of that was received from the Sonny Gray trade alone, but they burned $1M of that to sign 16 year old shortstop Ronny Rojas. (Ranked No.11 by Baseball America and MLB.com)

On July 2, the Yankees added three others: 16 year old outfielder Everson Pereira (Ranked No.4 by Baseball America and MLB.com) for $1.5 million; 17-year old shortstop Roberto Chirinois (No.16 by MLB.com and No.20 by Baseball America) for $900,000; and outfielder Anthony Garcia, for $450,000.

These four signings cost the Yankees $3.85 million, almost half of their international million bonus money.

“The Yankees increased their international bonus poll money from $4.875 million to $8 million this summer in trades that added $3.125 million” (Source: link to nj.com

Rosario 300K, Marte 200K, Vega 100K. Those 7 players take up 4.45M$ of the 8M$ they currently have to spend, and they’ve signed many more for lesser amounts. Their max cap with additional slot trades is 8.3M$

In 24 months, playing in Japan, he will still be a projection here. In 24 months, playing here, he will be a proven commodity. The difference in dollars will easily be made up when he become a FA six years from now, at age 29, rather than eight years from now, at age 31.

That kind of analysis just assumes he’ll dominate and stay healthy though. I do think he’ll be quite good, but it is possible that he flops (just as it’s possible that every top prospect flops). If that happens, he’ll have cost himself millions, potentially hundreds of millions, coming over early, unless his advisors negotiate some sort of back-door extension that’s clearly against the spirit of the cap but may be difficult to regulate

If he comes now, he’s relegated to a minor league contract that pays him less than 9M$ in bonus money and league minimum pay for a minimum 3 years once he makes a teams’ 40 man roster. Most teams will likely keep him for 7+ years given options and service time manipulation.

If he waits 2 years he gets 10-20M$ per year, is awarded a major league contract, gets multiple years, can have no options written into his contract, can also have no 6 year minimum service time requirement written into it.

And in the first option he could get injured (TJS) – never play again prior to even making big bucks, or completely fall flat on his face and be released.

He is literally giving away tens of millions by coming now. Though, I admit that waiting 2 years way, and he too could risk injury or sucking in those years and not even find a major league contract.

No team is going to send him to the minors. Players can put a clause in the contract that they can’t be sent to the minors without their permission. Alex Guerrero had such a clause. Like Tanaka he’ll start in the Majors. He will get anywhere from $300k to $3 million in a bonus based on where he signs.

Cespedes had a clause in his deal that the A’s had to release him at the end of the deal. If teams can still do that Otani can put a clause like that in his contract and get paid much quicker than after 6 years.

The lack of a salary cap is often cited as the main reason that large market teams have an advantage in MLB.

The lack of an international draft might actually be a bigger problem for small market teams. Between Japan and Latin America, many (most?) of the best players in the game do not come through the draft.

For example, the Pirates’ odds of getting Otani are 0.00000000000000%.

Draft odds aside, in the other major sports all of the teams have a chance to get good, young players. In baseball, not so much.

The new hard cap should make a big difference, but it’s still not the same as a draft.

I’ve seen varying opinions from scouts on his feasibility as a position player, but they seem to be unanimous in lauding his stuff and command projection. Because of that, I don’t think I’d be interested in him as a two-way player, unless, as has been speculated, he demands some guarantee from a signing team that he can hit. Not sure I’d want to risk harming the development of a potential TOR starter in order to have him moonlight as a maybe average hitter without a position

I know. My point is though that I’ve seen scouts that think he’s only an average – ish hitter in MLB. If that’s true, then he’s useless as a DH. Maybe they’re wrong, I haven’t seen him personally, and his offensive numbers are really strong.

Plus, he probably wouldn’t hit the day before or day after his starts, because pitching sucks and is grueling physically. If he’s only DHing three or four times per week and isn’t actually that good of a hitter, I’d just forget it and take my potential ace on a bargain contract instead.

Exactly. His gaudy batting numbers in Japan are unlikely to translate to MLB. For all the talk about how he’s a natural for the AL where he could DH the reality is he’s probably a better fit for the NL where he’d get at least 100 ABs a season and not create a hole in the lineup. A Bumgarner type of situation. Starting pitchers who can hit are much more valuable in the NL than in the AL.

If money isn’t the issue, then I could see the Padres as players. They have upped their presence in the Pacific Rim, including adding people, like Hideo Nomo to the front office, as well as Aki Otsuka. People like that could convince Otani to come to San Diego and become the face of the franchise. Plus doesn’t hurt to be on the West Coast.

To add to your point, the Padres have had a working agreement with the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters since 2008. Takashi Saito was in the front office last year (as an intern), Seiichiro Nakagaki, former trainer for the Fighters, is now a director of sports science for the Padres.

Really though, a few million isn’t likely to be the difference. It’s probably more about other factors — a willingness to let him play both ways, Japanese presence, quality of the team —despite what the delusional Cubs fan (singular) is saying, the Padres have a bright future

If possible, I’d love to MLBTR keep a running tracker of how much international spending money teams currently have available. I recognize that this could be made more difficult by the fact that it sometimes takes time for amounts traded to come out as well as smaller deals that don’t get as much fanfare, but I think something like this would be very popular, especially during Otani-mania, and seems like something up MLBTR’s alley.

***FYI: For anyone who may care about some unrelated trivia. Thus far into the 2017 season, it’s the first year since Hideo Nomo debuted back in 1995 that not a single Japanese ballplayer has debuted in the bigs.

Can u use the DH for another position? If he’s in the AL he would want to hit. Could u for example and not to call anyone out but say he signs with the angels. Could u let the pitcher hit for himself and use the DH for just graterol? Get a legitimate MLB bat in his place in the lineup. Not sure on the rules here.

The big question is really whether an AL team is willing to actually let him DH all the time. You figure teams like Cleveland, Boston, NYY, Toronto, etc, wouldn’t be willing to just bench good(ish) players for 600 Otani ABs just so he can pitch for them. Also for Otani, if it ends up he can’t hit MLB pitching, suddenly he will never bat again, something that could draw him more towards an NL team because he has to hit every 5th day there.

Not really. Kieschnick was an outfielder who converted to pitcher at age 30. He spent two years in the Majors as reliever and made only 7 starts as a hitter in that time, 4 games at DH and 3 in the OF. Otani wants to hit on a regular basis.

Is there a list of teams that will have the 300k restrictions when he becomes available?
I’d have to imagine he is going to prefer a team that 1)Has more than 300k to offer and 2)Has a DH so he can get extra at bats during the week if a team is willing to agree to it.

if you are an NL team it presents something interesting – you could sign him as a reliever where you start him in the OF and can re position him as a pitcher mid game or conversely you can start him and then reposition him to the OF mid game – it is interesting.

Where ever he goes, two things about him that will be likely:
1) A team will overpay drastically for him
2) He may be above average, but he will not be as good as his numbers in Japan show him to be..
I think of all the Japanese players, only Ichiro Suzuki really proved he could be just as good in the MLB as in the Japanese league.

It takes an incredible level of talent and hard work just to be a starting caliber player in the majors, and that much more to be a star. Are all of his tools as high quality as they’ll need them to be, and are they as adaptable as they’ll need to be to survive in the majors long term? We’ll see. I think it’s more likely that the two-way thing will be a gimmick like the legendary unhittable gyroball – but Otani could still be a star with whatever his best tool actually is. Probably his pitching.

As a met fan,I feel cheated that my team doesn’t have any interest in a great talent like Otani.The Wilpons are too cheap to entertain an offer for his services.As
long as they own the team,a world championship is just a pipe dream.

I would think the Yanks would be the front runner to land Ohtani, he fits them like a glove. They are a big market team with plenty of cap space. They have a young team with a lot of talent, and he could be the DH when he doesn’t pitch. Ohtani will like the right field porch. Yanks have also had some success with players from Japan. He will be the player that can put them over the top.

I’ve watched this kid play for the Ham Fighters in Hokkaido. If anything he definitely has the HYPE!! He can pitch decent and hit but does that make him babe ruth?? Japan thinks so but I think its doubtful. I hope someone like Phillies or Padres gets him. He won’t do well in the AL.